William Penn, England's Present Interest Considered, with Honour to the Prince, and Safety to the People

1675Select Works 3:203--5

Chap I. Of English Rights.

There is no government in the world, but it must either
stand upon will and power, or condition and contract: the
one rules by men, the other by laws. And above all kingdoms
under heaven, it is England's felicity to have her
constitution so impartially just and free, that there cannot
well be any thing more remote from arbitrariness, or more
zealous of preserving the laws, by which its rights are
maintained.

These laws are either fundamental, and so immutable;
or more superficial and temporary, and consequently alterable.

By Superficial laws, we understand such acts, laws, or statutes,
as are suited to present occurrences, and emergencies
of state; and which may as well be abrogated, as they were
first made, for the good of the kingdom: for instance,
those statutes that relate to victuals, clothes, times and
places of trade, &c. which have ever stood, whilst the reason
of them was in force; but when that benefit, which did
once redound, fell by fresh accidents, they ended, according
to that old maxim, Cessante ratione legis, cessat lex.

By fundamental laws, I do not only understand such as
immediately spring from synteresis (that eternal principle of
truth and sapience, more or less disseminated through
mankind,) which are as the corner-stones of human structure,
the basis of reasonable societies, without which all
would run into heaps and confusion; to wit, Honestè vivère,
alterum non laedere, jus suum cuiq; tribuere, that is, "To live
honestly, not to hurt another, and to give every one their
right," (excellent principles, and common to all nations)
though that itself were sufficient to our present purpose;
but those rights and privileges which I call English, and
which are the proper birth-right of Englishmen, and may
be reduced to these three.

I. An ownership, and undisturbed possession: that what
they have is rightly theirs, and no body's else.

II. A voting of every law that is made, whereby that
ownership or propriety may be maintained.

III. An influence upon, and a real share in, that judicatory
power that must apply every such law; which is the
ancient, necessary and laudable use of juries: if not found
among the Britons, to be sure practised by the Saxons, and
continued through the Normans to this very day.

That these have been the ancient and undoubted rights
of Englishmen, as three great roots, under whose spacious
branches the English People have been wont to shelter
themselves against the storms of arbitrary government, I
shall endeavour to prove.